Boing Boing » Vintage Weird

Odd and inappropriate Valentine's cards of yesteryear

Mark Frauenfelder — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 19:57:31 +0000

Here's a small sampling of artist Mitch O'Connell's fabulous Valentine's card collection gallery. (These are real cards, not something Mitch made up.)

Just in time to send to your Valentine sweetheart, a huge selection of the offbeat, odd, perplexing, inappropriate, outlandish, bizarre, sexist, eccentric and far-out funny cards, all collected in one place ...for YOU (with love)!

Subject matter includes anger issues, from punching, stabbing, shooting your loved one to running them over with your car. "A woman's place is in the home" themes with pots 'n pans, brooms and dust pans expressing how your heart beats for them. "Find the hidden penis" is a M.O'C Blog Valentine favorite with suggestively placed rulers, logs, bananas, balloons, rocket ships, and hot dogs showing how you really, REALLY feel!

Unintentionally Hilarious Vintage Valentine's Day Cards! See the top 100 Risque, Rude and Sexy examples of all time!

Mitch also has a new art book -- Mitch O'Connell, the World's Best Artist by Mitch O'Connell! Look for an exclusive preview soon on Boing Boing. It's available for pre-order on Amazon, or directly from Mitch's site.

What is this bizarre Indian "health gadget" from 1950s Bombay?

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 15:07:40 +0000

Crate-digging for old records on eBay, my brother found this bizarre health gadget identified as having been produced in Bombay in the 1950s. The seller writes:

Very rare and old Twin Transilluminator in Box from India 1950 in good condition. Its medical Instrument for sinuses and Eye therapy. Its made of steel and backlit. its electrical. on box has some description and photos about how to use this Instrument. Its rare and unique medical Instrument and must for medical instruments collectors. The size of box is 9 inch in length, and its width is 5 inch.

What the heck is the history behind this gizmo? More photos below.

Then 'Lady Life Guards' of 1940s Brooklyn

Xeni Jardin — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 20:04:01 +0000

The New York Times' City Room blog explores “Lady Life Guards,” an "oddly racy newsreel" made around 1940 about female lifeguards on a beach in Brooklyn. The video made the rounds on blogs this week after being featured on blog Sheepshead Bites. The Times' Andy Newman describes it as "a gently leering 10-minute tour de force of visual double-entendre and soul-stirring call-of-duty gee-whiz."

The film was uploaded to YouTube last week by a user who found it in the Library of Congress’s Prelinger Archive at archive.org.

(thanks, Michael Roston!)

Chicken hotdogs and garters for boys who want to be manly

Mark Frauenfelder — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 16:20:43 +0000

Two fine pieces of vintage ephemera from Mostly Forbidden Zone: A hotdog with the head of a chicken, and one heck of a manly garter for boys.

Creepers gotta creep — for science

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 15:35:08 +0000

In 1938, researchers at Bryn Mawr College published a paper on Egocentricity in Adult Conversations. In order to accurately record the pattern and content of conversations as they happened in real life, the researchers used several methods that would be considered ... sketchy ... today. Among them: Hiding underneath female college students' dorm beds.

Great moments in pulp fiction: "Lady, That's My Skull"

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 04:24:47 +0000

Cover scan link.

John Elmslie of Toronto shares this in the Boing Boing Flickr pool and writes,

Vintage paperback. "A Harlequin Book", Toronto, 1951. So Harlequin was publishing more than romances in 1951. The original paperback book is quite faded looking. The scanner pepped it up quite well, even though I hadn't asked it to. I'll have to look into that. :)

Aelita, Queen of Mars: Soviet Science Fiction film from 1924

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 01:59:20 +0000

In vintage ad archivist Paul Malon's excellent Flickr stream, I stumbled on this beautiful Soviet film poster for a film titled "Aelita."

A quick Googling revealed that this was for the motion picture Aelita, Queen of Mars, which Wikipedia describes as "a silent film directed by Soviet filmmaker Yakov Protazanov made at the Mezhrabpom-Rus film studio and released in 1924 (...) based on Alexei Tolstoy's novel of the same name."

Some describe it as the USSR's first sci-fi flick. Archive.org has the entire 80-minute film available for online viewing here, though the quality isn't great. It's also on YouTube, and here's part one.

You can also buy it in higher quality on Amazon, and here's their review:

A Soviet sensation upon its heavily publicized release in 1924, Aelita, the Queen of Mars is now a curiosity of post-revolutionary Russian silent cinema, a bit laughable in its revolutionary zeal not only on Earth but on Mars as well! Despite a cool reaction from critics, the film was such a hit with the Soviet public that many Russian babies born in '24 were named Aelita, and the Cubist designs of the Martian sets--heavily influenced by the avant-garde "constructivist" style--would in turn influence science fiction films in the years to follow (most notably the Flash Gordon serials). With costume designs performances that are truly out of this world, Aelita was the 1924 equivalent of a Spielberg spectacular; now it's a museum piece, unlikely to raise anyone's pulse, but it's startling to think that this film was even possible in 1924 Russia.
The story is almost beside the point, revolving around a married Moscow engineer who dreams of Aelita, the Queen of Mars, and is obsessed with building a spaceship that will take him to her. An alleged murder, passionate jealousy, and a bumbling detective are all part of the film's portrait of hardscrabble post-revolutionary lifestyle, but they pale in comparison to the intermittent scenes on Mars, which peak with the engineer's ultimate arrival and the eruption of a Martian slave rebellion! It's pure propaganda, but agreeably light and remarkably revealing of its time and place. Anyone expecting a Soviet Metropolis will be disappointed, but if you're fascinated by imaginative films from the silent era, Aelita is must-see viewing.
--Jeff Shannon

Still more about the film at IMDB.

1960 election day comics

Mark Frauenfelder — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 16:44:52 +0000

Ethan Persoff put together a funny/scary set of Election Day Comics from 1960. Make sure the "dumb blonde" in the office doesn't take your vote today!

In the year 2000

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 19:06:23 +0000

Illustration from a 1960 Cinzano ad, shared on Flickr by photographer and vintage ad aficionado Paul Malon of Toronto. His collection is extensive and excellent.

Autumn: Spaghetti-harvest time

Xeni Jardin — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 18:50:45 +0000

Some astute commenters in the Ukelele String Harvest video thread pointed out that this recent video is basically a re-creation/riff on this earlier, classic weird video, from a 1957 BBC show called "Panorama." From the Alexandra Palace Television Society, here's the whole story:

On April 1, 1957 the British television programme Panorama broadcast a three-minute segment about a bumper spaghetti harvest in southern Switzerland. The success of the crop was attributed both to an unusually mild winter and to the virtual disappearance of the spaghetti weevil. The audience heard Richard Dimbleby, the shows highly respected anchor, discussing the details of the spaghetti crop as they watched video footage of a Swiss family pulling pasta off spaghetti trees and placing it into baskets. The segment concluded with the assurance that, For those who love this dish, theres nothing like real, home-grown spaghetti.
The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest hoax generated an enormous response. Hundreds of people phoned the BBC wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti tree. To this query the BBC diplomatically replied, Place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best.
To this day the Panorama broadcast remains one of the most famous and popular April Fools Day hoaxes of all time. It is also believed to be the first time the medium of television was used to stage an April Fools Day hoax.
Since 1955 Panorama had been anchored by Richard Dimbleby, whose authoritative, commanding presence had made him one of the most revered public figures in Britain. If Dimbleby said it, people trusted that it was true. Which is one of the reasons why the spaghetti harvest hoax fooled so many viewers. His participation lent the hoax an air of unimpeachable authority.
Almost no one else at the BBC knew about it. The segment was not mentioned at all in the pre-transmission publicity handouts.
The line-up for that days show included a long segment about Archbishop Makarios, leader of the Greek Cypriots, and a clip of the Duke of Edinburgh attending the premiere of the war film The Yangtse Incident.
The second-to-last segment was about a wine-tasting contest, and then it came time for the spaghetti harvest.
Dimbleby, sitting on the set of Panorama, looked into the camera and without a trace of a smile said: And now from wine to food. We end Panorama tonight with a special report from the Swiss Alps.
The screen cut away to the prepared footage. When it was all over, Dimbleby reappeared and said, Now we say goodnight, on this first day of April. He emphasized the final phrase.
Panorama never attempted another April Fools Day spoof, despite numerous calls for a sequel. However, the hoax did inspire a number of similar stunts in its honour.
This film footage is from the Archive Collection held and administered by the Alexandra Palace Television Society.

Illustration from a vintage issue of OCD Monthly magazine

Mark Frauenfelder — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 21:14:08 +0000

Have you been saving your milk cartons?

(Via Phil Are Go!)

Find out what fun a train can be

Mark Frauenfelder — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 21:03:20 +0000

PhilAreGo happened upon this brochure for the Santa Fe Railway, and offered the following interpretation os the scenario depicted on the cover.

Wow! Get a load of them eyebrows! The two guys look like they're hoping to get her alone for some wicked doings, but she looks downright carnivorous herself. The standing man looks like he's dropping something into the drink of the seated man. All the while, the lady is staring at the chest of the pill-dropping man, where she knows that mere inches away, beats his juicy, delicious heart. I find it hard to have any sympathy for whatever happens to these three in the next few hours.

Phil then shows what the illustration would look like by retouching the eyebrows, making them lighter and then even heavier.

Santa Fe - Ride on the evil train

Creepy vintage novelties (photo gallery)

Mark Frauenfelder — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 21:05:12 +0000

A couple of weekends ago I took my 15-year-old daughter to the fabulous Farmers Market in Los Angeles. It isn't a typical farmers market. It was established in 1934 at the corner of Third and Fairfax, and over the years it has grown into a charming, bustling cluster of shops and restaurants. It has a great toy store, a bunch of really good restaurants, produce stands, butchers, home made ice cream shops, nut vendors, florists, barbers, shoe shine stands, and other specialty shops. It's got a distinctly old school feel, and thankfully has not been modernized. The whole place is covered so you can walk around in the rain or the blistering sun. It's one of my favorite places in Los Angeles.

Sarina and I had a great time visiting the Shine Gallery there, a place that sells vintage memorabilia. Somehow they are able to get their hands on large quantities unused novelties, magic tricks, and other ephemera. My overall impression from visting the shop was that people in those days had a nasty sense of humor. Here are a few of the things we came across there:

These plastic cigarette cases have passive aggressive messages printed on them, such as "Take one you cheap skate," and "Leave one for me! Chiseler."

This was the first magic set I ever owned. My cousin received it as a Christmas gift and never used it. Whenever I came over to visit I pulled it out of her closet and immersed myself for hours in the tricks and booklet. After my tenth or so visit, she ended up giving the set to me. The Mystic Smoke was a gloppy paste that you applied to your fingers. When you rapidly rubbed your fingers and thumb together for 30 seconds, a few strands of cobwebby glop would drift away for a few inches before dropping to the floor.

It's fun to watch your friends break their teeth on these plastic peanuts. It's hilarious when they choke on them and turn purple!

On the left: Calling card for stalkers and other "lovers." Right: A piece of plastic disguised as a pat of butter, for "party fun." The plastic was filled with dark specks, which would scare off anyone about to butter their toast.

If the magnifying glass hadn't shifted in its packaging I would have been fooled!

Check out Shine Gallery's excellent online catalog

Worst fight scene ever? More like BEST fight scene ever. (video)

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 01:34:20 +0000

[Video Link] Continuing in our Turksploitation theme, a spectacularly awful fight scene from the Turkish film "Death Warrior." Previously: worst death scene ever. (thanks, Michelle Strait, via internalbleeding)

Telephone management skills, 1957 edition: Stephen Potter

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 16:51:55 +0000

From the wonderful blog "Vintage Scans," a page from Lifemanship lesson from Stephen Potter, 1957 (11th impression). Potter was a British writer known for dry, mocking, self-help books, and the TV and film projects they inspired.

Ad, 1970: Use Dixie Cups, ladies, and you will never grow old

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 09:44:58 +0000

"Think of it. You'll have more time on your hands (...) to make a pantsuit. To live a little."

Shared in the Boing Boing Flickr Pool by vintage ad archivist MewDeep, and larger size here.

Late '60s ad for space jobs at NASA JPL

Xeni Jardin — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 15:36:15 +0000

A late-1960s ad that ran in Scientific American, scanned and shared in the Boing Boing Flickr pool by fdecomite.

The look is true to Mad Men, and the copy is true to life: I bet the Mars Curiosity team say stuff like that to each other all the time.

Give that dude a mohawk—oh, and increase NASA's budget so JPL can hire, instead of lay off?—and the ad could run today.

Cat Dance (video)

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 01:17:40 +0000

In the 1970s, someone thought this was a good idea. [Video Link]

(Thanks, Tara McGinley)

Pill-popping, jazz-loving Japanese youth in revolt, 1964 (photo)

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 09 May 2012 17:28:27 +0000

LIFE.com has a beautiful gallery of Michael Rougier photographs from Japan in 1964: runaways, rock and rollers, biker gangs, "pill kids" and other Japanese teens. LIFE Magazine published some of these in September, 1964, but some have never before been published.

Above, the original caption from 1964: "Kako, languid from sleeping pills she takes, is lost in a world of her own in a jazz shop in Tokyo."

Excellent vintage film about the first accurate atomic clock

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 08 May 2012 01:21:23 +0000

This short film was produced by the film unit of the UK's National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in the 1950s, and explains the principles behind the first accurate atomic clock, which was designed by Louis Essen and built at the National Physical Laboratory in 1955. The NPL's YouTube channel has other videos of interest to science geeks. (thanks, obadiahlemon)

Sad Schlitz Beer Clown is Sad (vintage ad)

Xeni Jardin — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 19:50:38 +0000

Image Link. From the excellent Flickr collection of MewDeep (lots of '60s-'70s ad scans), via BB Flickr Pool.

"My Favorite Museum Exhibit": The relics of a scientific saint

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:42:01 +0000

"My Favorite Museum Exhibit" is a series of posts aimed at giving BoingBoing readers a chance to show off their favorite exhibits and specimens, preferably from museums that might go overlooked in the tourism pantheon. I'll be featuring posts in this series all week. Want to see them all? Check out the archive post. I'll update the full list there every morning.

Most Americans probably associate the collecting of relics with the Catholic Church, and particularly with the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages—a time when shards of saints' bones and pieces of the true cross were big business, basically creating the West's first tourism industry.*

But hoarding and gawking at pieces of dead heroes is a human hobby with far older roots and a much broader appeal. It's been done all over the world, certainly since antiquity if not before, and it's not even exclusively associated with religion. This is one of those weird urges that just seems to be somehow intrinsically linked to how humans do culture.

Which brings us to these fingers. They belong not to a Catholic saint, but to Galileo Galilei, father of astronomy and (at the time of his death) condemned Catholic heretic. Because of the whole heresy thing, Galileo had to be buried in a back corner of the basilica where his family graves were. But, a hundred years later, after his reputation had considerably improved, fans disinterred his body and reburied it in a much more prominent spot. And, while they were at it, they cut off three fingers and removed a tooth. And started displaying all four bits in reliquaries like this.

Previously, Pesco told you about how two of the fingers actually went missing for 100 years, before turning up in 2009 when an anonymous donor turned them over to the Museo Galileo in Florence, Italy. Today, you can see all the relics of this secular saint on display there.

Thanks to Lauren Kinsman and Karen Ackroff who both submitted this exhibit separately. The photo I've used here, showing two of the fingers, was taken by Lauren Kinsman.

*In regards to true cross relics, there's a great John Calvin quote about there being enough pieces of the true cross in circulation that, if you brought them all together, you could build Noah's Ark. This is probably the only time John Calvin was ever funny. And I'm sure he felt bad about it.

Madonna's cautionary AIDS comic, handed out at a 1987 concert

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:10:39 +0000

From Ethan Persoff's ongoing chronicles of vintage weird ephemera: COMICS WITH PROBLEMS #7 - MADONNA ON AIDS. This public health pamphlet was handed out at one of her concerts, one night only, in 1987. Her image appears on the cover, and inside, a handwritten note urging for greater awareness of AIDS and an end to prejudice against those who contract it (or who are HIV-positive).

How to build a "Family Foxhole"

Mark Frauenfelder — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 16:40:25 +0000

Everything above ground level is getting blown apart in a fiery blast while this 1950s family gets ready to settle in for the evening in their cozy basement bunker. (Via X-Ray Delta One)

Delightfully creepy portraits of ventriloquist dummies

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 07:38:05 +0000

I will offer this without comment. See the rest of the dummies, who are not in police custody, at the Public School blog.

Thanks to the wondrous Leslie Marlow!

An appreciation of '60s and '70s bubblegum trading cards

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 08:52:13 +0000

Dangerous Minds recently did a nice image gallery of selected bubblegum trading cards of the 1960s and '70s, including some sci-fi classics, Bo Derek, What's Happening, and Dukes of Hazzard.

Yaya and Friends: Athens, Greece, ca. 1927 (photo, Boing Boing Flickr Pool)

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 15:26:06 +0000

"Yaya and Friends," a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial (2.0) image from bigfatstupidslob's photostream, contributed to the Boing Boing Flickr pool. About the image, I asked him where it came from, and he explained:

It's my grandmother and some of her friends in what seems to be a dress-up photo studio. Who knew they had them way back when? And in Greece no less! That's Yaya on the top right - her name is Domna.

Every Ray Harryhausen stop-motion monster ever, in one video

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 10:07:49 +0000

[Video Link]. As Mark explained in a prior BB post, "Ray Harryhausen is a stop-motion-animation wizard who is widely regarded as the master of old-school special effects."

(via Aaron-Stewart Ahn)

Chemcraft (vintage chemistry set, from Boing Boing Flickr Pool)

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 15:34:49 +0000

Contributed to the Boing Boing Flickr pool by Stephen Hocking.

It's National Use-Up-Your-Leftovers-in-a-Jell-O-Salad Week!

Mark Frauenfelder — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 04:19:14 +0000

What will you put in your Jell-O Leftovers Salad?

Jell-O Leftovers Salad -- For the hungry insinkerator (Via Ape Lad)